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Alice Coltrane, her harp, fills in the cracks of me

With gold. The Japanese call it Kintsugi.

Where the vessel broken, only gold will permit

Its healing. Its history. It's How the Stars Understand

Us, lemon flowers on the skin of the earth,

Mosquito filled with the blood that sirens its fat,

Long life. Who isn't dying to leave this house,

To go masked only in the shadow of one's animal-

Breathing, lonesome, unprotected, knowing

Nothing lives as foreignness or death,

That the black dog with the sword in his mouth

Passing from house to house will not bring its itch,

Its ticks and locks clogging our lungs, a permanent

Quarantine—nothing that a little gold

Melted to ichor and spilled into the veins

Won't seam. Everything is a blue divergence

On a harp, the red bells in the purple

Crepe myrtle this morning forgetting

That soon they will be the corpses the spring

Tree kneels to observe. No, no, they remember,

As everything dying remembers its mother's

Name. Say your mother's name. Not for power

But for the glimpse of power, to be more

Than a hesitation, gold filling in the cracks,

A window thrown open for no other reason

Than to continue a blue feeling, nothing

Needed other than this devotion to darkness,

A Fire Gotten Brighter, my daughter holding

My small name in her mouth, light-broken

Beloved, my daughter—a window thrown

Open—her voice, gold filling in the cracked

Basketball court of me, announcing all

Nature, all nature will be dead for life soon.

Journey to Satchidananda

Roger Reeves

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